What part of "Don't send me any chain mail" don't people understand? Before I start laying into the specific, offending piece of chain mail that sparked the rage; maybe a note on chain email in general is warranted:

Firstly: Googling "Chain mail" takes you to websites about medieval armour. (Hate, hate, hate.)

Secondly: The chain mails fundamental function is one of assimilation and transmission which fits in nicely with popular memetic theory. This means that even this article which is pushing a Republican press release from the podium for repeated use of the word ‘hate'; is actually still spreading awareness of the hated chain mail.

Thirdly: The chain email is the bastard child of the original, and soundly hated, chain letter.

Fourthly: The chain ‘family' of communication has long ties to intimidation, misinformation, hoax, superstitious and get-rich-quick pyramid schemes and have a history that spans back to the Middle Ages; meaning that the bandwidth stealing spawn are capable of evolution too.

I've now moved so far down the road of hate that I pause to re-consider someone's status as "friend" when they send me the inbox clogging trash.

Every single one of them nests in my inbox with exactly the same set of hated subject lines like a digs mate who always leaves their pubes on the soap or that tragically resigned feeling you suffer before seeing a Leon Schuster movie.

Sad subject lines. Reviled subject lines like:

FW: Fwd: FW: Fwd: Fw: I don't know why it works - but it does! Try it out

And the worst thing, the absolute worst thing is.... you know it's a chain mail before you ever open it! But it comes from a trusted friend, someone who drove you home, got pissed with you and maybe even had casual sex with you at her 21st; so as you slowly, inevitably move the cursor over the mail, you still stupidly hope for discretion and, like Jesus, pray for loyalty as you click the mouse and then BAM!

Some bullshit about Bill Gates giving me a bazillion dollars for forwarding this email to 10 of my friends. HATE!

I believe the chain mail to be the modern equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials where we sell out our mates (10 at a time) over some lame obligatory feeling of... what exactly? Peer Pressure? Social Contract?

This is not to say that I've never forward anything; today, in fact, saw me distributing some awfully toight PowerPoint slideshows of a very festive looking wet T-shirt shindig in some Scandinavian club that only really exists in awfully toight PowerPoint slideshows that you share with friends. But it doesn't count as chain mail to me, I cite relevance and discretion as my reasons and if any one of the select recipients ever complained (riiight...), I'd stop immediately.

It's always the same people too, the ones that send the chain mail as a form of communication, of reaching out and letting you know that you still blip on their social radar. To me, it's the social equivalent of meeting someone for drinks and stiffing them for the bill. I prefer the romantic sentiment of a "happy thought", a little text message or no mail at all over the hated e-chain.

This most recent piece of ‘kak correspondence', the one that sparked this thread of rage, came from a serial offender (4 times at my count) and involved a file (in DAT format (hate.)) of 2 dolphins which are, supposedly, identical but due to some meta-cosmic, half-baked, pseudo Freudian assfur; your mind makes them look different, the degree/number of differences then translates to your specific stress level.

Now I wasn't meant to read all this before looking the pics of the bottle-nosed brothers but the hated *.dat file was taking ages to download and so I did. And if I wasn't stressed before checking my mail, I sure as balls was stressed after.

It ruined my morning; my coffee tasted all bitter and a grey cloud descended on the day... which got me pondering the motivation behind the hated mail.

So I called the serial chain mailer and asked her about the mail and why she did it to me; was it a passive-aggressive thing, did I forget her birthday (which I did)... and it turned out to be the most obvious answer of all.

She hadn't given it a second thought. She simply got it from someone and sent it off to many someone elses without any real reason or rhyme, it was just what she did with chain mails.

Bit of an anti-climax but not really that surprising when you think about it.

Living life at the pace we do maybe sending someone a piece of trashy chain mail isn't to say that you remember them, but to see if they remember you.